


On the morning Scully marries him

by Mangokiwitropicalswirl



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-30
Updated: 2017-06-30
Packaged: 2018-11-21 09:10:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 487
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11354322
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mangokiwitropicalswirl/pseuds/Mangokiwitropicalswirl
Summary: This little piece was something inspired by Aloysia Virgata's "Henry" universe, an AU in which later-in-life Scully remarries a man named Henry, after she and Mulder fail to work things out. It's a phenomenal work that you should check out at Aloysia's site. Here's my tiny contribution.





	On the morning Scully marries him

**Author's Note:**

> This little piece was something inspired by Aloysia Virgata's "Henry" universe, an AU in which later-in-life Scully remarries a man named Henry, after she and Mulder fail to work things out. It's a phenomenal work that you should check out at Aloysia's site. Here's my tiny contribution.

On the morning Scully marries him, she takes a long look in the mirror as she smooths her hair and touches up her makeup. It goes without saying, without thinking, that she wishes her mother were here. Maggie would have cried to see her in the ivory dress, would have coddled the step-grandchildren, would have joined her elbows-deep in topsoil in his garden.

Everyone believes the day that you get married you’ll feel uniquely whole, blissfully free from uncertainties. Happy. 

And she is. She catches her own gaze in the mirror and knows that she’s the only one who’d see the wistful mote of resignation in her eyes. But not a resignation of defeat, it’s one of understanding. She better understands at fifty now than she did at thirty that there are choices. Always choices. 

Someone told her once that love flows through us like water, softening our edges the way water wears down sandstone, or even granite. It carves out space for itself inside of us, making us larger, widening the heart.

Mulder’s love had been a tumult, a raging river, a flood. It had opened her like a canyon, revealed a grandscape of dizzying heights and crevices inside her. It had split over into corners she herself had not explored. Together, their love had flowed and thrashed and roiled, until she was hollowed out like a deepend cavern, like a riverbank destroyed by sudden flood.

And then it had receded, slowly, like the bitter end of a geologic age. 

The thin ribbon that still trickles through her even now was not enough to fill the newly-barren spaces. As years went on, the heart crumbled like loose rock, eroding like a monument to a long forgotten era. 

Contrary to popular belief, love is not all you need. Sometimes you need therapy. And meds. And sometimes you need to let it go.

On the little card that came along with flowers there was just one word, “Always.-- M”.

There were years she would have bristled at the word, hearing in it all the codependency and desperate possession that were the hallmarks of their bond. But she hears it now the way she knows he means it, with the openness of someone who will always be her friend. Before all of it, at the very heart of it, he had been her dearest friend.

When Henry came into her life, it crept up on her like the warm waters of a bending river. His love curled and soothed and nourished until she felt green and young.

In the mirror, she smiles the half-smile of a woman blessed to find there’s more of her to give. And more to know. She dabs perfume on each wrist and behind her ears, between the shadowed valley of her breasts. Beneath them in the hollow of her chest, she’s wider now and knowing, surprised and grateful she is able to bloom again.


End file.
